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The causes of crime rates essay
The causes of crime rates essay
The causes of crime rates essay
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Synthesis and Gaps The campaign against crime is a continuing concern. It is a war that the police cannot win alone. Police cannot change the ”root drivers” of crime such as poverty, freedom, unemployment, dysfunctional families, poor housing, moral education, ambitions, civil liberties, and other ills of socio-economic opportunities. Thus, all characteristics of police work should be premised upon active community consent, trust, and participation. In his study, Howell (2009) stated that crime rate is major statistical tool utilized by every faction of law enforcement. It gives a picture of how crime is either growing or slowing down in particular areas. It also details which crime is committed in and by whom, using several factors such …show more content…
Consequently, there has been widespread interest in the measurement of police performance using traditional crime indicators. Although useful for a specific purpose, these indicators of performance do not attempt to gauge in a meaningful way the customer satisfaction with the quality of police service or the quality of police-community partnerships. (Rosenbaum, 2004) A big issue is raised regarding evaluation of police performance due to the fact that there is no agreement on what effective policing means and implies. Whereas, fluctuations in crime rates have traditionally been used by the media and politicians to evaluate police performance, criminologists and police scholars, have raised questions about the appropriateness of this common sense practice (Bayley, 1994). Research firmly shows that social, demographic and economic forces determine the bulk of aggressive crime rates. Therefore, it becomes unjustifiable to treat crime levels as indicators of police effectiveness, particularly when police-related variables are at best very weakly related to crime rates in emperical studies. Despite the researches made on police performance accumulated in the past 30 years, the definition and thus the correct assessment of effective policing remains nebulous and intensely contested (Reiner,
According to Kelling, Pate, Dieckman, & Brown (1974), patrol is the “backbone” of police work. This belief is based around the premise that the mere presence of police officers on patrol prohibits criminal activity. Despite increasing budgets and the availability of more officers on the streets, crime rates still rose with the expanding metropolitan populations (Kelling et al., 1974). A one year experiment to determine the effectiveness of routine preventive patrol would be conducted, beginning on the first day of October 1972, and ending on the last day of September 1973.
By approaching these ideas with solid research goals and planning, researchers have come up with two basic crime fighting strategies that can increase police effectiveness. The first strategy Community Policing, which addresses immedia...
A critical examination of police departments across the United States would show that while law enforcement agencies do common work, few agencies utilize the identical same strategy to tackle crime and disorder problems within their communities. Many agencies still deploy a traditional response model to address routine and emergency calls for service. The response model places a high emphasis on fast response times to calls for service and effective investigations which result in arrest and prosecution. However, more and more agencies are implementing variations of new strategies to deal with crime and disorder issues within their jurisdictions. Some of these newer strategies include community-policing, hot-spot policing and
The police are usually charged with the great responsibility of ensuring that citizens are living quality lives that are free of crime and fear. In order to perform this duty effectively, the police need accurate and deeper knowledge of the citizens and issues they encounter in their daily lives. This knowledge will not be easy to come by if the police work independently from the citizens. Over the last several decades, police agencies have been working to gain the respect and the cooperation of the communities they serve. Community Oriented Policing was introduced to bring a closer working relationship between the citizens and the police.
For decades, researchers have tried to determine why crime rates are stronger and why different crimes occur more often in different locations. Certain crimes are more prevalent in urban areas for several reasons (Steven D. Levitt, 1998, 61). Population, ethnicity, and inequality all contribute to the more popular urban. Determining why certain crimes occur more often than others is important in Criminal Justice so researchers can find a trend and the police can find a solution (Rodrigo R. Soares, 2004, 851). The Uniform Crime Reports are a method in which the government collects data, and monitors criminal activity in the United States (Rodrigo R. Soares, 2004, 851). They have both positive and negative attributes that have influenced
Police departments must execute their duties in such a manner that protects the conditions of a democratic society and addresses the security needs of all individuals and groups. The execution of these duties must also show the community that they serve that they are good stewards of the positions they have been afforded the opportunity to hold and those who hold these positions must be free from corruption. The term ‘police corruption’ has been used to describe many activities: bribery; violence and brutality; fabrication and destruction of evidence; racism; and, favoritism or nepotism.
Television has affected every aspect of life in society, radically changing the way individuals live and interact with the world. However, change is not always for the better, especially the influence of television on political campaigns towards presidency. Since the 1960s, presidential elections in the United States were greatly impacted by television, yet the impact has not been positive. Television allowed the public to have more access to information and gained reassurance to which candidate they chose to vote for. However, the media failed to recognize the importance of elections. Candidates became image based rather than issue based using a “celebrity system” to concern the public with subjects regarding debates (Hart and Trice). Due to “hyperfamiliarity” television turned numerous people away from being interested in debates between candidates (Hart and Trice). Although television had the ability to reach a greater number of people than it did before the Nixon/Kennedy debate, it shortened the attention span of the public, which made the overall process of elections unfair, due to the emphasis on image rather than issue.
Third, problem-oriented policing entails a greater and closer involvement by the public in police work. Communities must be consulted to ensure that police are addressing the...
Bibliography Why Good Cops Go Bad. Newsweek, p.18. Carter, David L. (1986). Deviance & Police. Ohio: Anderson Publishing Co. Castaneda, Ruben (1993, Jan. 18). Bearing the Badge of Mistrust. The Washington Post, p.11. Dantzer, Mark L. (1995). Understanding Today's Police. New Jersey: Prentice Hall, Inc. James, George (1993, Mar. 29). Confessions of Corruption. The New York Times, P.8, James, George (1993, Nov. 17). Officials Say Police Corruption is Hard To Stop. The New York times, p.3. Sherman, Lawrence W(1978). Commission Findings. New York Post, P. 28 Walker, J.T. (1992). The police in America, p.243-263, chp. 10, Walker, Samuel (1999).
Arguably computer crime mapping has helped mitigate the negative perception held about the effectiveness of police in fighting crime. According to Goldstein & McEwen (2009), perceived confidence in police abilities largely decline in the 1970s and 1980s. Studies conducted at the time, established that the existing policing strategies needed an overhaul. For instance preventive patrol and rapid response to police call (which were the predominant strategies) did very little in crime prevention. Also in line with the findings, available statistical figure clearly pointed out, crime rates-even in areas patrol by highly qualified police forces-were rising at an alarming rate. Police scholars were affected by the negative perception as much as the police; therefore they intensified their search for a solution, by carrying out various studies (Goldstein & McEwen, 2009).
Crime Analysis has many benefits to the community. Community engagement, targeted initiatives, strategic use of resources, and data-driven decision-making contribute to decreasing crime. Crime prevention and community satisfaction with police services, while linked to the number of officers on the streets, does not depend entirely on the visibility of patrol officers. Community engagement, targeted initiatives, strategic use of resources, and data-driven decision-making contribute to decreasing crime. So in closing I believe that departments that take the positive elements of foot patrols and combine their efforts with crime analysis that focuses on the time, location, and type of crime, may use the findings to develop strategies to decrease crime and enhance the quality of life in their communities.
From this Community Police Consortium, the BJA put together a report titled Understanding Community Policing, A Framework for Action, which focused on developing a conceptual framework for community policing and assisting agencies in implementing community policing. The basis for this consortium was much more direct than the previous efforts set forth by Presidential Commissions during the 1960’s and 1970’s, and led to what became known as the Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS, Title 1 of the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994). The core components outlined in the BJA report listed the two complementary core components to community policing: community partnership and problem solving. The report further stated that effective community policing depends on positive contact between patrol officers and community members, establishing and maintaining mutual trust as the primary goal of a community partnership, and police and community must join together to encourage and preserve peace and prosperity. While these are just a few of the recommendations listed in the report, there were many more that set forth the framework for community policing, but these were the core components.
To conclude, Community policing represents a major development in the history of American law enforcement, but the extent to which this approach is a success and dominates contemporary policing remains a source of debate. In my point of view, community policing is good for communities. It has challenged the traditional concept of the police as crime-fighters by drawing attention to the complexities of the police role and function. In addition to the police officer hard work; citizens can also make a difference and contribute to make neighborhoods a better place to live. For instance, citizens can hold community meetings to talk about concerns and agree on solutions help organize healthy activities for children in your neighborhood, join or starting a neighborhood crime watch program, and talk to your community police officers and share information and concerns.
During most of America’s recorded history, measuring crime and violence was not an accurate science. Crime statistics were recorded at local levels, but oftentimes this was not a priority of law enforcement agencies. Furthermore, statistics were often skewed to reflect better performance of these agencies than was the case. Only recently, during the last generation, has crime statistics been measured on a national level to determine crime patterns. The easiest crimes to measure, because of their nature, were homicide and auto theft.
The public concerns about the huge upward trend of crime in the society since the 1970s, as the law and order in criminal justices, became more and more important on the political agenda (Hopkins 2013, p.118). However, according to Sutherland, Cressey, and Luckenbill (1992, p.48), they claimed that “the statistics on crime are probably the most unreliable and the most difficult to all statistics on social phenomena”. In the following paragraphs, I will start by explaining the definition of dark figure of crime, then discuss the data published by official departments because they are usually the principal source that used to show the crime statistics to the public with its limitations, along with talking about the usefulness of using Crime Survey